


Behind The Lines

by Jean_grantaire



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, war of devolution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-15 21:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11814402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jean_grantaire/pseuds/Jean_grantaire
Summary: 1667 - the War of Devolution. The Chevalier is wounded, and Philippe cares for him. Alternatively - one tent, two princes, an unreasonable amount of questionable medical advice and a series of very inopportune moments to fall in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for war and references to fighting and injuries in this chapter.

“Where is the Colonel of the Harcourt Regiment?” Philippe snapped. The day felt as though it had worn on for centuries; rain drummed a dull rhythm against wet canvas that sagged under its persistent touch, drops following well-worn tracks down the side of the tent to join their sisters in splattering wetly across the muddy paths through the camp. Somewhere between his temples, a headache was beginning to play to the same beat.

  
“Haven’t you heard, your Highness?” The young guard stationed at Philippe’s tent sounds surprised more than anything, dark eyes darting to Philippe from under a steadily-dripping hat.

  
“Heard what?” Unbidden memories surfaced in his mind: late into the previous night, the Chevalier throwing idle gossip over his shoulder as he gathered up his clothes, the flickering candlelight chasing hungry paths across his smooth, bare skin as Philippe’s mouth had done earlier; the meeting on strategy in the early hours of that morning, shortly after a watery dawn had broken across the horizon, where he’d been tired and irritable enough to snap at everything that dared to breathe but still managed to be the most beautiful person Philippe had ever seen.

  
Bringing himself back to the present, he realised that the guard was speaking. Surely, if there had been any good reason for him to take so long in reaching Philippe’s tent after the day’s fighting had finished, he would have registered it then.

  
“…medical tent, last I heard.”

  
Unease settled deep in his stomach. “Medical tent?”

  
Concern touched the guard’s expression, too well-trained to look annoyed at Philippe’s apparently slow comprehension of his words. “To stitch him back together, I would presume, your Highness.”

  
The unease sparked into fear, flashing through Philippe’s veins at the speed of flames touched to gunpowder. Without another word, he was past the guard and out into the muddy warren of pathways criss-crossing their latest camp. He could scarcely believe it; the fighting so far had hardly been difficult, casualty numbers had stayed low and the Chevalier de Lorraine of all people seemed too perfect, too ethereal to be struck down as easily as any other man in the camp.

  
Perhaps he wouldn’t have believed it at all, if he wasn’t passing through a field of army tents. If he hadn’t spent the day laying siege to a Dutch town, if he hadn’t seen Dutch and French blood mixing in pools at the town gates, if he hadn’t been aware every moment of the last few months that his body was no less fragile than that of any man next to him. If, if, if.

  
The flag over the medical tent hung limply against its pole, as much a victim of the day’s seemingly endless rain as the rest of them. Philippe scarcely noticed it as he rushed inside, demanding the attention of the nearest man who looked to be at least some kind of physician. Honestly, any man alive enough to talk would have been enough, so long as he had the information Philippe was after.

  
“Where is he?”


	2. chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philippe fusses, and approximately everyone is less surprised by it than they should be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in this chapter for mentions of death, dead bodies and injuries

Confusion and more than a little concern wrote their way across the physician’s face. “I’m sorry, your Highness…?” He ventured cautiously.

Philippe was distantly aware that it was careless of him to appear so obviously upset and dishevelled – on a raid or battlefield he may have been little different to any of his men, but in the camp he was supposed to hold up some sort of blue-blooded image. There was nothing very regal about the rain soaking through his clothes, however fine their tailor might have been, nor about the splatters of mud against his boots and breeches, nor the panic fizzing through him. A royal person was the kind depicted in paintings: of pristine attire and perfect noble expression. The King would never appear so imperfect before his subjects.

Currently, Philippe could not have cared less.

Having decided that the physician was taking too long to be even remotely useful, he abandoned him to search the tent himself, determined that any man with as much presence and familiarity as the Chevalier would not be difficult to find.

The sick and wounded were laid out on the ground, the space too cramped for them to lie on anything more luxurious than sheets, almost shoulder to shoulder in a twisted parody of parade lines. Uniforms that once gleamed under the stare of the sun at Versailles now lay tattered and stiffened with dried blood and mud rather than newness. Between the sobs and moans and awful coughs of dying men, only the dead lay silent, frozen limbs held at attention for a general that living eyes couldn’t see, sheets draped over them in a pathetic attempt at privacy (though whether it was privacy for the dead or the living, Philippe couldn’t tell). He would know, Philippe promised himself, he would know if any of these bodies were the same one that so frequently found its way under his own sheets, warm and impossible and alive. There would be no need to identify a body for that – surely the whole world would be a little colder, a little darker if it had been plunged into the sudden absence of such a bright presence.

Philippe almost missed him with his first glance. The Chevalier looked unfathomably fragile, stripped of all of his usual finery and wit, his face pale and pinched with pain even though he showed no signs of consciousness. But he was _alive_ – Philippe hastened over to find his skin warm to the touch, his chest rising and falling around breaths that marked him different to any cloth-covered corpse.

A white flag of tightly-wrapped bandaging around his foot marked the root of Philippe’s panic. It was less terrible than he’d feared, though the inescapable reality of seeing it with his own eyes made his stomach twist unpleasantly, upset and concerned but also irrationally angry at the bandages for daring to exist, daring to offer proof of injury on this man.

Like this he looked young, young enough to be mistaken for a teenager once more. Was this how he’d appeared almost a decade ago, Philippe wondered, when he’d been little more than a child sent off to prove himself on a grown man’s battlefield? Not that he’d held onto much childish innocence at court even then.

From nearby, a rattling cough came close enough to disturb a few strands of the hair hanging limp and frizzy around the Chevalier’s shoulders, less than its usual magnificent self where it lay devoid of life in the dim, dirty light. It was enough to spur Philippe into action – he couldn’t leave his lover here, surrounded by disease and death and despair. He couldn’t sit in his tent on the other side of the camp and do nothing whilst the Chevalier lay here and suffered. Even if he survived the ordeal, it was doubtful that either of them would ever forgive Philippe for it.

“How did this happen?” His tone was almost soft, expecting no response, the words more directed to the unconscious form before him than anyone else as he touched careful fingers to a familiar cheek, the feeling of dried mud and dirt on the skin there foreign and wrong.

“A stray gunshot from a skirmish with some farmers before they reached the town gates, Monsieur.” Philippe glanced up, only slightly surprised to find that the physician he’d spoken to earlier had followed him. “A couple of the men brought him back.” He offered by way of additional explanation.

Perhaps a lucky accident more than anything, then, Philippe considered. If the bullet had hit its mark, would he have made his way back to the camp at all? Would they have left him to rot in some waterlogged Dutch field, a forgotten pile of bones left to become a nothing in the middle of nowhere? Would he have ended up as a trophy, strung up or cut into keepsake-sized pieces in the town they were currently besieging? Would Philippe have made it beyond the town gates, with the knowledge that he might encounter a piece of his lover within, or be forced to look up into those eyes, lifeless and accusing from where he’d ended strung up as a decoration?

“Move him to my tent.”

“Your tent? Monsieur?”

“I will tend to him myself.” The very idea was bizarre, certain to be unpopular and cause difficulties, least of all when his brother heard of it. Judging by his expression, the physician thought Philippe had succumbed to the madness that lurked in the dark corners of every army camp; the madness of the battlefield, so much more difficult to cage and contain once it had been acknowledged, however unwillingly. But Philippe’s mind and expression both were set as unyielding as stone over this. He would have his Chevalier in his own tent, under his personal care until he had healed.

The physician opened his mouth as if to protest, though after another glance at Philippe’s expression he seemed to think better of striking such a stone with a sword as fragile as his own tongue, nodding before he retreated to make arrangements.

Watching as the Chevalier was shifted onto a wicker stretcher and carried across camp was difficult. Philippe itched to do it himself, to know that no further harm would come to him on the short journey under a careless pair of hands, but it would have been far less than practical to carry the stretcher single-handedly. Several minutes of anxious hovering, painfully slow progress and occasional, almost unforgivable slips in the mud later saw them arrive at Philippe’s tent, passing the confused guards with no more explanation than a sharp glance from Philippe.

Another minute and they were alone, the Chevalier deposited carefully on Philippe’s own cot with all of the pillows and blankets in the tent at his disposal (admittedly not a vast number, but likely more than had gathered in any other tent in the camp) and only slightly surprised glances from the men carrying the stretcher. Philippe dragged over a chair for himself and captured a motionless hand to toy with between his own, brushing off most of the dry dirt and kissing each knuckle in turn. Dissatisfied, he fetched a cloth to finish the job, running the fabric over every inch of exposed skin he could reach with all the delicacy of one polishing a priceless statue made entirely from thin glass until the Chevalier might as well have sparkled under the feeble light of sunset seeping into the tent. Job finished, its worker slightly less anxious now to be doing _something_ to help, Philippe picked up one of his now-clean hands again and settled in to wait for the Chevalier to shake off the heavy grasp of sleep.

It wasn’t until much later, startling awake from an uneasy doze to a sharp cramp in his neck and an unnaturally hot hand in his, that Philippe entertained his own creeping suspicions that something might be wrong.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise in the next chapter ol' chev will actually feature as a character rather than a glorified object  
> find me as always @almostasunking on tumblr!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Chevalier battles with a fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a note: in this chapter the chevalier de lorraine is referred to as Philippe (i don't think he'd call himself chevalier in his head lmao) and the duc d'orleans is referred to as Monsieur
> 
> warning for swearing, too

_Five. The garden they played in was neater and more elaborately-designed than any he’d ever seen, stretching on endlessly in all directions, immaculate as far as the eye could see. There wasn’t an adult in sight, not even a servant or gardener – strange, admittedly, but then they must all be inside, being polite and boring and ugly. Far more important was his brother calling, demanding his aid in slaying the fierce imaginary dragon before it ate them. Wooden swords tightly grasped between small fingers, they shrieked and swung and stabbed at the warmth of the early afternoon sun, shimmering over the horizon like flashes of scales, at the warm breeze ruffling the immaculate hedges: fire breathed from a mouth of a hundred wicked teeth. It was always so much more fun when Louis played along, weaving the glittering real world into the thick fabric of imagination to build exciting worlds for their heroic shared adventures._

_Nine. Endless corridors, drowning in expensive decoration. Everyone said that he would be beautiful when he grew up. He knew that he was beautiful already – he saw mirrors every day, and he wasn’t blind. Someone had said that he should be training for a religious life. He wasn’t going to be a priest. Priests never had fun and they always smelled like churches. He was going to win wars, he was going to be the life of every party, he was going to hold power over the brainless nobles at court. He was going to have the most beautiful and influential wife in Europe. The King might have been the centre of the world, but he was going to shake out of life all of the fun and power it had to offer; golden fruit from a golden tree, there to be laid claim to._

_Fifteen. Brutal. Shameless. Devoid of scruple. Angelically handsome. The whispers that chased him at this party were no different to any other, no more interesting than the whispering fabrics of his costume as it shifted with his every movement. Between the blush dusting the face of his dance partner and the appreciative glances of the youngest musician, he had far more important matters to concern himself with. Nearby, the Comte de Guiche was laying insult after insult upon a sickeningly adoring Monsieur. That, he thought, would be spectacular when it fell apart._

_His first battlefield. The beat of hooves that had signalled the first charge echoed around his body, thundering through his veins. The heavy metal of a sword gripped tightly in his hand, glinting dully on strokes that caught weak sunlight through the haze of death and cannon smoke. Each glint was a blood-soaked bargain, disputed time and time again by the clash of metal on metal: your life for mine, your life for mine. The enemy fell and fell at hands still cloaked with the naïve invincibility of childhood._

_Nineteen. “’Only throw the handkerchief and there is not a Lady at court who will not pick it up.’ I can’t imagine what Minette might have done if she’d heard. Exiled him on the spot, perhaps.” Delicate fingers reached for another grape, feeding the mouth spinning such an intricate web around the court. Dark excitement sparked across Villeroy’s eyes for just a moment before it was carefully concealed with light curiosity. “Exile, you say?” Satisfaction spread warm and rich in his stomach._

 

There, for a moment the dream rippled like the disturbed surface of a still lake, the wakeful air above so tantalisingly close he could almost taste it. Rough sheets against his skin, a low murmur of voices, dull throbbing from his foot and the miserable twist of nausea in his stomach. Sleep snuck up on him, and snatched him back into its depths all at once.

 

_Twenty-one. Gasping for breath, his sword raised high in victory, the body by his horse’s hooves already forgotten in all but the honour it thrust upon him. Cheering from his army, an audience he was more than willing to receive. The battle was already theirs in spirit. One regret: that he would not be home in time to receive the full force of Monsieur’s reaction to the news of the duel._

_Twenty-two. Grass tickled his back through his shirt, the soles of his feet through his stockings. Blades of green waved lazily at the edges of his vision, mostly hidden behind the safe fort of Monsieur’s legs, cradling and sheltering his head. This corner of Saint Cloud’s gardens was a private paradise, hidden away from at least the immediate greedy reaches of duty._

_“Bishop Bossuet,” Monsieur’s words sounded from somewhere above him, as deliberate as the laying down of a winning hand of cards “the Duc de Cassel and Minette.”_

_Philippe wrinkled his nose daintily at the options presented to him, lazily cracking open one eye as a piece of apple was pressed to his lips. Considering his response, he carefully licked the juice from Monsieur’s fingers, pleased by the way it made his eyes darken with interest. “Fuck Cassel, marry Bishop Bossuet – don’t look at me like that, darling, there must be a reason he gets so much praise for his oral talents – and kill Minette.” He walked his fingers up Monsieur’s thigh and—_

\-- _Monsieur’s expression, dragged down at the edges into a frown, his mouth open but the words emerging blurred and muffled as if there was much more than a few inches of air between them—_

 

Another army camp. A tent? He was freezing, chilled to the bone as though he’d spent a night outside, nakedly exposed to the most bitter breaths of winter. This moment was not one he could place, not one that he had lived before. There was a hand in his own. He struggled to open his eyes—

 

_Seventeen. Naked, climbing out of a fountain with a boy whose name he would have forgotten by the morning, giggling helplessly as they found their hands too numbed by the cold bite of the water and the buzz of powders consumed earlier in the night to pull their clothes back on properly. Everything was spinning slowly, not unpleasantly, and he couldn’t remember if they’d already fucked or not. Well, there was no harm in another round to make sure. He turned back to find his companion had already vanished—_

_\--the dancing at an abrupt halt, the court gathered around to witness a new spectacle. Monsieur, that night a shepherdess, was on the ground. Guiche’s foot connected with his stomach, forcing a sob from deep within him—_

_\--blood, so much blood, warm on his face and dripping from his hair. The scent was thick, disgusting, filling his nose right down to his lungs, he was going to choke on it, he was going to be sick—_

 

Cold fire licked through his veins, fed on the cold sweat that stuck his hair to his skin, his skin to the sheets. Was this his waking world now? This time his eyes granted him access to it. Monsieur leaned over him, the deep shadows beneath his eyes accentuated by his pale complexion, frightened words tripping past his lips but none of them making sense. Behind him, the Marquis d’Effiat spun slow circles, dressed in the same elegant costume he’d worn at the party where they’d first met. On his other side, Madame held a thin sword, stretched out to hover just short of touching his chest. Disgust crawled in her expression.

 

_Twenty-three. Throwing open a curtain with a dramatic gesture; light splashing across a room starved of its presence, shadows leaping backwards out of its path. Monsieur sat motionless at the end of the bed, dressed in mourning clothes, the only shadow undisturbed by the sun. Well, almost undisturbed – he offered Philippe a glare for daring to invite its presence. Rather than rising to the first whispers of a fight in that expression, he crossed the room and kissed his forehead, dropped gracefully to his knees, kissed his hands. There, the expression softened—_

_\--stumbling over one another on the way to somewhere, anywhere with a moment’s privacy and a soft bed, drawing himself up to full height for an unflattering impression of the latest overambitious mignon that he was in the process of getting rid of, Monsieur’s drunken laughter echoing bright through the hallway—_

 

Louis sat beside him, his expression grave, some doubtlessly important document or another in a messy pile of papers across his lap. Another Louis, this time no older than ten, was lying across the floor reading a book, his serious expression almost comical on his young face.

“What is this?” He addressed the question to the older version of his brother. Louis would know, some part of his brain, driven by childish irrational rationality, assured him. Louis always knew.

“You’re dying.” It was the high voice of the child that spoke, not even looking up from his pages.

 

_\--stalking through the corridors of Saint Cloud, blazing with fury that exploded out of him at every opportunity, every door that he had to open to storm through, every curious face, every fucking useless lady that Madame employed purely to conspire against him with, where the fuck was d’Effiat when he needed him—_

_Twenty? Twenty-one? Late morning sun creeping around the curtains, pale limbs tangled with his. Madame in the doorway, furious, her rage a living thing that reared and tossed its head within her._

_“I would like to speak to my husband.” She hissed. “Alone.”_

_Behind him, Monsieur groaned and dragged him closer, not awake enough to register anything beyond disapproval at the early hour. He watched with an insufferably smug expression as she retreated._

 

He had to wake up, had to be alive. He struggled to shake off the heavy weight of sleep, limbs moving in a clumsy panic. Hands holding him down, soothing him, Monsieur’s voice from far away.

 

_“You’re alright. You have to be alright.”_

_\--Sunset and dancing and Monsieur’s mouth tasting like expensive wine and summer—_

_\--naked before a fireplace, d’Effiat chasing the patterns of firelight across his skin, Monsieur laughing at something one of them had said—_

_Five. Louis took his hand, and led him home._

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this first chapter is a little short! I'm hoping that just getting this work started will motivate me to continue it haha
> 
> Please excuse any historical inaccuracies relating to 17thC army camps! I have tried my best to research and stick to historical accuracy. Also worth mentioning that even a few minutes of research into the war of devolution and its part in the story of these two (as historical figures rather than characters) brings up some pretty cool stuff (which i'm more than happy to chat about!!)  
> as always, find me on @almostasunking over on tumblr!


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